White Fang

I hate to be so brutal as to only give this movie 5 stars as it was a good film for the most part, but I cannot abide the rewriting of an American Classic such as this. While I understand the choice to mitigate the violence expressed in the book for young viewers, I do believe the screenwriters did a disservice to Jack London's writing by changing characters, their motives, and even the ending. Netflix's White Fang is a solid children's movie, but a poor depiction of Jack London's classic.

I wanted to like this film more than I did, as the general story, theme and atmosphere were quite nice, but there were some flaws that I can't get away from and have to take into account for my rating. I'd say the biggest one for me was the animation. Quite a bit of it felt quite jerky and unnatural, and the emotions in the human faces were lacking. A lot of the time it felt like I was watching video game cutscenes rather than a film. The words even seemed to be quite out of sync a lot of the time. Fortunately there was quite a bit more emotion coming from White Fang. The other main criticism I have is that some things just didn't make much sense. The only example I'll mention is when Maggie is suddenly anxious when she apparently forgets that she left White Fang with the chickens, only a couple of minutes after she was talking about it with her husband. It may seem minor but it can still affect the viewing experience. Overall I'd say it was a nice Friday evening watch but I'll probably not watch it again.

I love this movie. I grew up reading the book, as a child the abridged version, and as a teen and adult, the unabridged. The movie was rather faithful to the book in most aspects with the exception of the ending. This movie cut out the entire ending of the book, and with other references to the story in shows and other movies (New Girl), I honestly thought I misremembered the ending, thinking I had the abridged versions ending in my head, until I reread the original story to realize I was right. That was disappointing to know they cut out a good portion of the story, but overall I loved this adaption.

This movie was on the children's list for Netflix. Of course, it is an original, we decided we would watch this new one! From beginning to end you just want this wolf to make it. I loved this movie, even the sad parts. Was glad it had a happy ending. Would watch 100 more times! Go white fang!